p2pnet slow down
p2pnet.net News:- For the next little while – not too long, I hope – there’ll be a marked drop in the number of p2pnet posts.
p2pnet isn’t entrepreneurial: it’s a personal page which grew a little, and with myself as the only staff member, things tend to drift. So for the next few days, I’m going to devote most of my time to dealing with items, emails and phone calls I’ve been neglecting.
p2pnet is my only source of income and I wholly depend on advertising to keep it going, feed my family and pay my mortgage and when I say there’s not much left over, I’m not exaggerating. Nor are things getting any better. The Big Four Organized Music cartel is slowly closing down the commercial p2p sites – my advertisers – meaning my income is drying up, and fast.
What’ll happen if the ad income vanishes altogether? I’ll cross that bridge if and when I come to it.
For now, two important (to me) issues are constantly in the background; the p2pnet Kazaa Kase in which Kazaa boss Niki Hemnming is suing me for publishing something she apparently took personally, despite her statements in a recent Billboard Q&A, to wit:
Billboard: “You’re going to negotiate with people who have had you followed, raided your house and office, and called you a gangster. Have you got a problem with that?”
Hemming: “Business is not about individuals and it’d be pretty foolish of me to take personally things that have happened in the past.”
I didn’t have her followed, raid her house and office, or call her a gangster. I merely quoted an Associated Press report of widely available court proceedings in which she was questioned about the sale of her “multimillion dollar Sydney mansion”. My story also contained an anonymous reader’s comment on the same subject.
“Try and wrap your head around this one,” said Britain’s The Register at the time. “Sharman Networks – the big daddy behind the Kazaa P2P software – and its CEO have filed a lawsuit against the pro P2P news site P2Pnet.”
Dan Burnett, my lawyer, has things well in hand, but it’ll be six months at a bare minimum before I have my day(s) in court as a committed supporter of p2p and the p2p community, and someone who runs the only peer-to-peer site of its kind. Then I’ll be able to tell a jury of my peers, some of whom will no doubt be bloggers themselves, why the Kazaa Kase should be killed stone dead.
Should be interesting ;p
But what does all of this have to do with Freedom of Speech in Canada?
In response to charges of defamation, regardless of whether the accusation has any justification, “the likely response of most intermediaries will be to remove the content because the risk of not doing so outweighs the benefits of keeping it up,” an IT Business story has Dr Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, saying, adding, “It would appear . . . that removing the content is the costless choice, even though there is a very big price to be paid, and of course that is the price of freedom of speech.”
“Canadian courts have barely begun adapting the ancient law of libel to the internet age and Charter of Rights,” says Burnett, who represented the CBC and others on media access issues in the Robert Pickton serial murder trial. “The p2pnet case is going to require the courts to deal head on with some fundamental, precedent setting issues.”
And Geist, again, in a BBC column, “The case places the spotlight on the liability of internet intermediaries. The importance of the issue extends well beyond just internet service providers – corporate websites that allow for user feedback, education websites featuring chatrooms, or even individual bloggers who permit comments face the prospect of demands to remove content that is alleged to violate the law.”
Stay tuned and while you do, below are some links if you’re not familiar with what’s been happening. And if you have a dollar or two going spare, there’s a donations box below.
Cheers! And all the best …
Jon
- p2pnet goes on hold … (Sunday 14th May 2006)
- Sharman escalates p2pnet attack (Thursday 18th May 2006)
- Kazaa’s P2P libel suit threatens to mute Canadians (Tuesday 23rd May 2006)
- Free speech in Canada (Friday 2nd June 2006)
- p2pnet Freedom of Speech concert (Wednesday 7th June 2006)
- Anonymous p2pnet poster named (Thursday 29th June 2006)
- Sharman drops p2pnet libel case (Wednesday 12th July 2006)
- p2pnet vs Kazaa: update (Thursday 13th July 2006)
- Free speech, libel and the internet age (Monday, 31st July 2006
- p2pnet’s Toronto trip (Tuesday 8th August 2006)
- Dear p2pnet (Saturday 19th August 2006)
Stay tuned : )
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.
~Mahatma Ghandi
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September 5th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
I love your site, take off as much time as you need. Good luck with the lawsuit.
September 5th, 2006 at 6:59 pm
Honesty, I don’t know how you put out as much as you do.
Take a break, do your stuff, then take another break to rest!
a looming law-suite that would take my families home and only source of income away would have me in another mind set all together and would probably affect my health too.
September 7th, 2006 at 2:36 am
Guilty as sin John.
Nobody from the record companies went to a record seven excuses for their libel, it wasn’t done on behalf of an advertiser and they didn’t lie about this when they got caught.
September 7th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
It would be refreshing if you would find yourself a life, Gachnar.
No one here believes you, except you.
No one here cares about what you have to say, except you.
No matter how many different posters you pretend to be, no
one will believe you.
You’ve failed